ABSTRACT
This paper analyzes the relationship between crime and contemporary art based on the traumatic realism employed by Guatemalan visual artist Aníbal López in the 2000s. For this purpose, the idea of “crime as a work of art” is considered one of the most important modes of poetic elaboration of trauma in contemporary culture. The underlying hypothesis is to emphasize the institutional dimension of that elaboration, including the critique of the production and circulation systems of art. As will be seen, part of Aníbal López’s artworks discursive power comes from the deliberate clash between two distinct contexts: on the one hand, the traumatic environment of violence, crime, and poverty in Guatemala in the 1990s and 2000s; on the other, the institutional context of the globalized contemporary art world, with its sophisticated rites, its exotic and cultured fauna, its own places of exhibition and legitimation.
Keywords:
Aníbal López; crime as a work of art; art and violence in Latin America; traumatic realism; institutional critique